Only the Night Knows
by gray-streaks
Summary: Some nights there's only one thing she can do. Between TLH/SoN


Annabeth lies on her bunk in cabin six and stares at the ceiling. At the other end of the cabin, one of her brothers is snoring. Across the aisle, by one of the windows, one of her sisters mumbles in her sleep and rolls over. Even though it's the middle of the school year, the cabin is almost half full, and normally the familiar sounds from the kids around her would be a comforting thing, there's nights when she's at her dad's in California or in her private dorm at Westgate where she just can't sleep because of the quiet. Tonight though, the snores and sleepy murmurs only serve to remind her of who's missing, despite the fact that he's rarely been in cabin six and he's certainly never slept in here.

_Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and six minutes._

She's exhausted, can't remember the last time she slept well, or even through the night, and the whole cabin knows it. Annabeth had called lights out hours ago, almost an hour early, though nobody had said anything, and she still can't sleep. Her mind won't shut up.

They know where Percy is, or rather, where he probably is, but if he's tried to call them and let them know he's okay, the messages haven't been making it through. Annabeth has tried to IM him dozens of times from the fountain in cabin three, but wherever he is, Iris can't find him and the drachma just reappears in her hand. Jason says it might be because Iris is a Greek goddess that doesn't have a Roman counterpart and because Percy's in the Roman camp, she can't see him, but Annabeth knows that he doesn't believe it himself and that he's just trying to make her feel better. She appreciates the effort, but really, it just makes her feel worse.

_Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and seven minutes_

Percy hasn't even tried to get a hold of his mom and that's just not like him. Practically the first thing he ever does if he thinks he might have been declared dead is call Sally, most of the time anyway, when he isn't too busy running for his life.

But if he's too busy running for his life to call his mom, even Grover can't find him and he has a direct connection to Percy that doubles as a homing device. The satyr's looked everywhere. He's even spent three weeks in California scouring the Bay Area for some sort of sign, but no luck.

He wasn't going to interfere of course, this whole project of Hera's is too precarious for that, but any sign that Percy still exists, is still alive, would do wonders for everybody's sanity. Normally, he could just follow his empathic link, but even though he's positive it's intact, he can barely find it. The link should only break if one of them dies, but, "It's gone completely dead," he says when anybody asks him, "Like somebody's shut of his end." Nobody knows what that means.

_Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and eight minutes._

What if Percy's forgotten about her so completely that he's found somebody else? What if she finds him and he's found a pretty daughter of Venus?

Jason had come clean about some girl called Reyna after the rest of his memory had completely returned. He's adamant that she had never been his girlfriend, that, until Piper, he's never had a girlfriend, but he does admit that she had wanted to be. That they had even discussed it his last night in Camp Jupiter, but had entered their separate houses as friends.

What if Percy...

Annabeth sighs and squeezes her eyes shut for a few seconds. Gods she hates 'what if's.'

_Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and nine minutes._

She opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling for a few seconds before sighing again. So, it's going to be one of those nights.

Some nights, she's able to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling until the exhaustion overwhelms her and she falls into and uneasy sleep. Most of the time she's still wait for the sleep to come when the sun comes up. She had known before she called lights out that tonight wasn't going to be one of those nights.

Others, she gets the urge to work. On these nights she waits until the others are asleep and pulls out Daedalus' laptop. The Gods had closed down Olympus before she had finished rebuilding, so some nights she opens her Olympus files and tweaks miniscule details on her designs until they're perfect. Of course, her definition of perfect changes every night. On the rest, she does her homework. It had taken some convincing, but Westgate believes that she's needed at home for a family crisis for the foreseeable future and her teachers are emailing her lessons to her. The laptop can get a Wi-Fi signal anywhere, so while she's protected behind camp borders Annabeth uses it to her full advantage. She wakes up a lot of mornings hunched over her laptop, but tomorrow won't be one of them.

Naturally, there are nights where her body says, "Enough is enough," and she literally passes out where she sits. It's not a good sleep, but it's deep and long and she'll take what she can get at this point. Those only happen about once a week though, and she had fallen asleep with her arm around a glass of blue coke during dinner two nights ago.

And then there's nights like tonight, nights where she misses Percy so desperately and completely that her entire body aches. Nights where no amount of work will distract her from her own loneliness, the pain, the constant exhaustion induced headache that only makes it harder to sleep. The nights where she needs to feel Percy around her just to keep her sanity, the nights that only make it worse.

_Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and ten minutes._

Annabeth sighs and gives in. "Alright, Seaweed Brain," she murmurs to the dark ceiling above her, "you win."

Slowly, reluctantly, she throws back the blanket and swings her legs out of bed. She reaches down and finds the sneakers she has tucked just under the edge of her bed. She slips them on, not bothering with the laces, grabs her phone, and leaves the cabin as quietly as she can.

_Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and eleven minutes._

It's cool and wet outside, Chiron must have let the snow through the borders, but because it never gets cooler than seventy degrees within those borders, it melted before it hit the ground. Still, the moisture makes it feel colder than it is and Annabeth rubs her bare arms almost wishing she had grabbed a jacket. It doesn't matter though, she's only outside for a few seconds before she's slowly climbing the steps outside Cabin Three and carefully opening the door.

Even when Percy's home, it's weird coming in here by herself, it's so much like her own cabin, but so different at the same time. The same beds line the walls, though there are fewer of them and most of them don't have any bedding on them. And apart from the color of the tiles, and she suspects the water pressure, the bathrooms are exactly the same. But instead of the homey scent of paper and ink, she's greeted with the scent of the ocean, clean and salty and exactly what she needs right now.

Exactly three months, twelve days nineteen hours and twelve minutes after she first realized Percy had disappeared Annabeth steps into cabin three and shuts the door behind her. It's not the first time she's done this, not by a long shot, and she knows cabin three nearly as well as she knows her own, so she doesn't bother with the light, it'll just catch the harpies' attention and, despite the fact that Chiron's told them to leave her alone, they'll insist on coming to see what she's doing.

It's even colder in here than it is outside, but it doesn't bother her. She goes straight to the locker at the foot of Percy's bed, trailing her fingers along the blue blanket as she goes, and pops it open. At the top, within easy reach is one of Percy's hoodies, her favorite and she pulls it out.

She holds the well-worn fabric to her nose for a few seconds before she pulls it on. She keeps it here because she hopes that it'll help hold his scent longer, but it's already starting to smell more like her than it does him. She squeezes her eyes tight as she pulls it over her head and then quickly wipes at the tears that are starting to slide down her cheeks. She wraps her arms around her stomach, trying and failing to pretend it's a hug from behind.

"Why do I do this to myself?" Annabeth murmurs, sliding a hand into the pocket of her pajama pants and pulling out a golden drachma,_ the_ golden drachma. She goes to the slightly glowing fountain in the back and carefully kneels in front of it. Slowly, carefully she presses the coin to her lips, "Please, Percy," she whispers to the empty room as she pulls it away.

Silently, she sends a prayer to Iris and tosses the coin through the tiny rainbow the fountain always produces. "Please," she whispers again, unsure if she's talking to Percy or the goddess. At this point, it probably doesn't really matter.

For about five seconds she thinks it finally worked this time, but then the coin falls back out of the rainbow and clatters to the floor like it always does, and a message in Ancient Greek appears along the lines of the rainbow like _it_ always does. It disappears before she has a chance to read it, but she knows what it says, 'Person cannot be reached,' Iris used to say it herself, but apparently she's decided Annabeth isn't worth the extra effort anymore.

Annabeth swallows, her throat tight, and picks the drachma up with shaking fingers. She clenches it in her fist for a moment, gripping it so tightly that she can feel the uneven edges digging into her palm. Slowly, she gets to her feet and presses the coin back to her lips before carefully tucking it back in her pocket.

"Maybe next time," she murmurs to the fountain like she always does. It had started as a way to keep her hopes up, but now she just sounds sad, and probably looks pretty pathetic talking to what is essentially a bowl of water. She feels pretty pathetic too, but for once, she doesn't care.

Annabeth tries to keep a brave face. Everybody's expecting her to figure this out, to find Percy, to stop the war with the Romans before it starts. Jason's technically in charge of it all, but everybody looks to her. She's the leader whether she likes it or not and she can't let them see her fall apart though even her pride has stopped caring. Her siblings can see right through it of course, but they don't say anything and have masks of their own to help cover for her.

But there's nobody here, and her mask had started slipping the instant she walked through that door.

She can feel herself start to shake as she stumbles back down the cabin towards Percy's bed. The tears are back, but she ignores them, it doesn't matter anymore. She doesn't even have to be strong for herself. She can't be, she has nothing left and hasn't for months.

Tomorrow morning, or in a couple hours rather, she'll find another reserve of energy she didn't know she had be and she'll be back in cabin six before the others can prove she ever left, but for now, she kicks her shoes off, sets the alarm on her phone by feel because her visions to blurry and the screens to bright for her to do it properly, clutches one of Percy's pillows to her chest and lets go.

_Three months, twelve days, nineteen hours and twenty-three minutes._


End file.
